Why Your Untitled Relationships Matter

People have intensely intimate relationships without labeling them all the time. Sometimes, people don’t feel the need to call their connection by any names. Other times, individuals avoid labeling a relationship because they think that it obliterates any responsibility that they will have to take once they call it such.But what happens when a "defining the relationship" talk never happened? What if you both did discuss it and you both settled on vague terms like "seeing each other," "friends with benefits," or nothing at all? While attitude emerges in people of all ages, I see far too many of my millennial peers falling for the idea that a relationship needs a label in order to be considered significant.

News flash: Every connection you have with another person is a relationship. Love is about quality; things like intimacy, emotion, and reciprocity gauge your relationship's quality.

David Bowie in His Labyrinth

For me, David Bowie wasn’t an ageless celebrity to rival the likes of Madonna or Bob Dylan, but a strange, god-like figure. The type of celestial being whose career spans generations of eccentricity and experimentation, existing on the fringes of mythology, never quite a part of the mainstream pantheon, but always there, nevertheless, as an extravagant showman with several nom-de-plumes to his credit and an androgynous wardrobe. The kind of god who keeps popping in and out of the stories we tell our children, sometimes reversing the roles, sometimes disappearing for pages on end, and occasionally reinventing the stories themselves. Like the man on the subway you encounter almost every day without ever noticing him, so that in your mind he’s not really a man at all, but part of the subway itself, a permanent fixture in an impermanent world.

"Sweeter than Heaven, Hotter than Hell"

Quail Bell film critic Alex Carrigan takes on a popula. You can read his reviews of Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel, and look forward to his predictions for the ceremony.

Every year, the Academy Awards nominate multiple films for Best Picture, each with its own degree of public awareness and rating. There’s usually a few movies that the viewers will know about and anticipate receiving the nomination. But for every American Sniper and Selma, where the public is likely to know about it due to its cast and through word-of-mouth, there’s always a movie or two that the public will look at and ask “What’s that movie?” This year, that film is Whiplash, a film directed by Damien Chazelle. It’s a shame that so few people have seen or heard of Whiplash at this point, because it’s honestly one of the best films in this year’s crop.

Dipped in Gold

*Editor's Note: This article is part of a series written by Alex Carrigan about this year's Academy Award nominated films. To see the rules for this challenge and to find other articles related to it, go to this page.

Credit: Pinterest

I want to believe I've grown over the last ten days. I want to know that writing about eight different movies and the awards ceremony around them would make me realize something new about myself or about the Academy Awards. I feel this way because I want to know that there was some impact from doing something like this series. Aside from getting me to publish regular content with personal deadlines, I want to believe this experience has made me a better critic and a better film goer.

When Sex Trafficking Victims Go To Prison

​"I was so brainwashed. I didn't have a voice. I didn't even know who I was anymore," she said. "Even though this was not the life that I wanted in any way, shape, or form, this was the life I was living.”

Mad Max: Fury Road: ​Racing to the End

*Editor's Note: This article is part of a series written by Alex Carrigan about this year's Academy Award nominated films. To see the rules for this challenge and to find other articles related to it, go to this page.

When I started this series, I said that Mad Max: Fury Road was going to be the barometer for how I measured the other films. It was the only film I had seen of the eight nominated films before this last week, it was the one that was freshest in my mind thanks to popular culture, and it was the one which was going to be singled out as the oddest of the nominees. For a film like Fury Road to get one of eight Best Picture nominations is quite strange. After all, how could a big-budget action movie, and one that's the fourth in a series of films from the 1980s, compete with a followup by last year's winning director, a Spielberg period drama, and several "Based on a True Story" films?

Room: This Room is Not a Home

*Editor's Note: This article is part of a series written by Alex Carrigan about this year's Academy Award nominated films. To see the rules for this challenge and to find other articles related to it, go to this page.

Well, this was an interesting film to end the series on.

Room tells the tale of a boy named Jack (Jacob Tremblay) and his Ma (Brie Larson). Ma and Jack live in Room, a small space with only a skylight for light and a man named Old Nick who comes by to bring in food and other supplies. For the first part of the film, the viewer doesn't understand exactly what's going on. But then it becomes clear: Old Nick abducted Ma, has been holding her captive in Room for years, and impregnated her during this time. What follows is a tale of how Ma and Jack escape Room and reintegrate into society. For Jack, this is also about him learning to experience everything in the world for the first time.

The Big Short: Build Your House on a Rock, Not on Wall Street

*Editor's Note: This article is part of a series written by Alex Carrigan about this year's Academy Award nominated films. To see the rules for this challenge and to find other articles related to it, go to this page.

I found today to be an incredibly exhausting day. This is not just because I spent nearly three hours digging my car out of the snow, but because I watched The Big Short​. As my aching body began to relax inside my warm apartment, I decided to put on The Big Short and let that be the cap to my day. Two hours later, and not only did I feel mentally taxed, but emotionally devastated. The Big Short is a very complex film, with a lot of technical terms, a lot of characters and stories to follow, and a fairly upsetting message at the end.

Should You Wear Yoga Pants?: The Definitive Checklist

There are a lot of women out there right now who think yoga pants are great everyday wear, even when they’re not working out. There are probably also just as many people who think that women wear yoga pants entirely too much, and that they're inappropriate.
​Because of this confusion, we’ve created a handy checklist you can use in order to determine if wearing yoga pants is appropriate. After all, with the way society reacts to women in yoga pants it’s clear this has become a very big deal.

Bridge of Spies: Cold Bore

*Editor's Note: This article is part of a series written by Alex Carrigan about this year's Academy Award nominated films. To see the rules for this challenge and to find other articles related to it, go to this page.

Something interesting happened once I finished Bridge of Spies. I left my room once it ended to go into my kitchen and make some tea. In the living room, my roommate was watching Song of the Sea, an Irish animated film from 2014 that was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the last Academy Awards. I came in for the last ten minutes of that film, and although I only vaguely knew what the story was about from reading about the movie last year, I was able to go along with the story. It was very visually impressive, with a great blend of hand drawn animation, music, atmosphere, and emotional resonance. I even found myself tearing up during this.